My Music Since 2005 … with Kids

I’m very particular about my algorithms. Whether it’s Netflix or Disney Plus or (especially) my Spotify account… I don’t have much grace for those who mess with my beloved stats and recommendations.

Music was one of those things that changed my life as a young person and opened my eyes to a wider world of thought and expression. I would lovingly arrange my CD collection weekly by descending order of how much I liked albums or artists as a 14-year-old. That continued into my binders of CDs we all kept in our cars in the late 90s while I was in college. 

Of course, Napster and the trading community around bands such as Phish and the Grateful Dead led me to many late-night sessions working on papers and burning CDs on my trusty desktop in the early ‘00s while a grad student at Yale.

Then came the iPod. I had the second generation (yay Firewire!) and had a revelation about the portability of 1,000 songs in my pocket (A THOUSAND!). That also meant that whatever remaining physical media I had quickly became digital and I began to pour money into iTunes. Pandora came into the picture around this time, and I still have a playlist there going back to 2003.

All along the way, I waited for the day I could keep track of what I listened to and track long-term trends beyond what the iTunes interface offered. Then Last.fm launched, and I was beyond excited to have that service finally (complete with API’s and an open RSS feed that I would even tie into a Twitter bot that tweeted out what I was listening to in my house… sadly that broke in 2015). When Spotify finally arrived in the USA from Europe, I jumped on the bandwagon immediately and hooked it up to my Last.fm profile. And so, I’ve had a music catalog of what I’ve been listening to since August 2005.

Way back in 2012, I made a post about this as well. However, the Google Home and Apple HomePods were still a few years off, and my algorithms were protected. I’ve been good about keeping accounts separate and all of our children have their own Disney Plus, Netflix, and especially Spotify profiles. 

However, in a moment of weakness, I connected my Spotify account to the Google Home profile that works for the device in our 4-year-old’s bedroom. BECAUSE SHE WANTED TO LISTEN TO PEPPA PIG STORIES. You can glimpse the carnage wrought on my once pristine and full of indie jangle pop Last.fm page documenting my personal music history. After just a week of torment, I now see this in my once-beloved Daily Mix. 

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And what is this madness on my Spotify dashboard… Grizzley and the Kids?? THE LEGO MOVIE 2 (ok, the movie was good and the ending made me cry)??

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I thought about spending a few hours going through my Spotify and Last.fm profile and deleting all the 2,130 plays of Peppa Pig and associated music befouling my algorithm. 

But then I stopped. And I laughed. And then I smiled. The story of my 4-year-old and our relationship is also being told here. I’ll never get back this time with her and her resolute love of Peppa Pig Stories or whatever Grizzley and the Kids is. I’ll always have this record of the seven days we got to share something very important to me and hopefully one day to her. 

Being a parent means giving so much of yourself in completely unexpected ways. We know that we will have to give our young ones time, money, attention, lessons, sleep, etc. We don’t ever imagine something like a Spotify algorithm or list of songs that seemingly meant so much over the last 20 years could be impacted by a child or given over to them for a week.

But they are, and that’s amazing.

In the giving and sharing of ourselves as parents, we find the real soundtrack of our life and how our selfish wishes or want of specific songs to be played do not always determine that soundtrack.

So thank you to my 4-year-old for the reality check and the lesson she has given me with her songs. And for sharing those with me on my algorithm. Her playlist is amazing. I can’t wait to see how the soundtrack of her life develops and to know I will carry a little snippet of it here.

But rest assured… I changed her Google Home device’s default music service option to Apple Music since I don’t care about that algorithm. She can totally take Apple Music 🙂

Productive Week?

Weird that I’ve gotten so much done the last few days since it’s technically “summer” for us teachers. But I find that keeping busy with consulting work, aquarium building, and taking notes on what I’m reading (to make myself a better person and teacher!) helps me keep the “I miss my students” blues at bay!

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Have a great weekend, Pal!

What a week. Let’s write it down and remember it and live in the present!


Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/tsascience/message

The Architecture of Life Sermon

I preached today at Garden of Grace UCC in Columbia, SC (where Rev. Merianna Harrelson is the Pastor). The main thread of the sermon and the service was a rumination on Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King’s talk at Barratt Jr. High School in Philadelphia in 1967. The video of his words was feared lost for decades until they were recovered and then posted here on YouTube. I have listened to many of MLK’s sermons available in various formats over the years, but this talk/lesson/sermon always resonates with me, given that I’m a teacher.

The basic idea is that we are all working on our life’s blueprint. That’s especially true for young people in school who need to hear this message. Good blueprints create good life patterns, whatever our age. What’s required is 1) deep belief in your own dignity, 2) determination to achieve excellence and 3) commitment to the eternal principles of beauty, love, and justice.

King distills so much wisdom and insight in these 20 short minutes. I highly suggest you watch it.

I’ve also attached the presentation from our worship service this morning with our Scripture from Deuteronomy and the accompanying liturgy.

Bringing Back Personal Blogging

Anyone who has read my writings and ravings here since 2006 will know I feel this exact way.

Buy that domain name. Carve your space out on the web. Tell your stories, build your community, and talk to your people. It doesn’t have to be big. It doesn’t have to be fancy. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel. It doesn’t need to duplicate any space that already exists on the web — in fact, it shouldn’t. This is your creation. It’s your expression. It should reflect you.

Bring back personal blogging in 2023. We, as a web community, will be all that much better for it.

Source: Bring back personal blogging – The Verge

Good read.

I had something happen along these lines when I lost my Instagram and Facebook accounts after being compromised through a connected service with a bad password. There was no recompense or way to gain access to those networks that had been built up and maintained over years and years. Luckily, I had backups of the actual content, but all of those connections and gardens of interaction were immediately plowed up. I had been gardening on someone else’s land.

It’s yet another reason I’ve been focusing more on content and actual thoughts here and using Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, etc, for more tertiary purposes. This domain and blog are my canonical place on the web.

Go and do likewise.

Apple Shutting Down ‘Dark Sky’

I’m going to miss Dark Sky. It was one of those important iOS apps that made a generation of early adopters into lifelong users.

As a reminder, Apple says it will be shutting down Dark Sky on January 1, 2023. The popular weather app was already removed from the App Store in September and it will stop functioning for existing users starting tomorrow.

Read More on Mac Rumors.

Planning Out Social Media in 2023

I’m constantly on the fence about pre-planning or pre-scheduling too many marketing posts ahead of time on social media. It’s handy, for sure. However, given that events happen without warning, there are real risks that could make whatever you’re trying to do look incredibly out-of-touch.

However, there is a benefit to having a month (or week) long agenda of posts to help keep you or your team on track. Social media is a platform that often rewards spontaneity, and you should be building that into marketing efforts. But it would be best if you had a foundation on which to grow, and a good plan can get you there.

For example, I stumbled upon a free monthlong planner for social media posts in January 2023 from Plann. There is any number of these out there. Still, the benefit is that these calendars take away the guesswork and produce dozens of content pieces that can be used across social networks, promotional materials, videos, recaps, etc. 

So spend some time thinking and planning while allowing your marketing efforts to remain responsive and flexible in 2023!

How Angels Found their Wings

How Angels Found their Wings | History Today:

The angels of the Bible were not winged. (The winged Cherubim and Seraphim are figures derived from the Near Eastern tradition of winged zoomorphic guardian figures and are not angels since they perform none of the angelic functions.) In fact, in the Old Testament angels are often not clearly distinguished from humans at all. The New Testament letter to the Hebrews recommends: ‘Do not forget to show hospitality to strangers, for by so doing some people have shown hospitality to angels without knowing it.’ When angels are clearly identified in the New Testament, they are distinguished from ordinary humans by markers first found in Old Testament books, such as gleaming white robes, or a countenance like lightning – but no wings.

Imagining Jesus (Again)

One of my favorite Bible studies to lead every year is the “Imagining Jesus” series, where we look at historical, theological, and entertainment (movies, music videos, cartoons, etc.) depictions of Jesus. The ultimate point is to help the participant realize that we “imagine” Jesus’ appearance, demeanor, and personality based on a number of our cultural influences and personal ideas (and perhaps reading the Gospels and New Testament more closely can help us expand our preconceptions). As a Baptist, I heavily emphasize reading the Bible rather than taking someone else’s word for it.

When we get to the end, people often ask me, “ok, ok, this is all good… but what did Jesus really look like?”. To answer, I usually turn back to this explanation from my beloved Dura Europos and how the closest conception we can get to what Jesus might have looked like actually comes from a depiction of Moses in the Synagogue there (or Abraham / Nehemiah in the second image here… there’s still debate there).

Good read during this Christmas Season, nonetheless!

“For all that may be done with modelling on ancient bones, I think the closest correspondence to what Jesus really looked like is found in the depiction of Moses on the walls of the 3rd Century synagogue of Dura-Europos since it shows how a Jewish sage was imagined in the Graeco-Roman world. Moses is imagined in undyed clothing, and in fact, his one mantle is a tallith since in the Dura image of Moses parting the Red Sea, one can see tassels (tzitzit) at the corners. At any rate, this image is far more correct as a basis for imagining the historical Jesus than the adaptations of the Byzantine Jesus that have become standard: he’s short-haired and with a slight beard, and he’s wearing a short tunic, with short sleeves, and a himation.”

https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-35120965?fbclid=IwAR0ID4z37__bKAucGub_cjBuuDq6IHJ04XgXxsYnHdq2Xu7CGKJYcSBnHVA